Beyond Usability: UserCentered Design Strategies Christina Wodtke :: christinacarboniq.com Carbon IQ - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Beyond Usability: UserCentered Design Strategies Christina Wodtke :: christinacarboniq.com Carbon IQ

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Title: Beyond Usability: UserCentered Design Strategies Christina Wodtke :: christinacarboniq.com Carbon IQ


1
Beyond UsabilityUser-Centered Design
Strategies- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-Christina Wodtke christina_at_carboniq.com Ca
rbon IQ User Experience Group http//www.carboniq
.comtel 415 824 7090
2
Introduction to user-centered design
  • What is it?

Its more than usability testing
NO!
3
Introduction to user-centered design
  • What is it?

A method for understanding and considering the
person who will experience your design while you
design
4
Introduction to user-centered design
  • What is it?
  • A way to get user reactions and feedback to
    design
  • Performed throughout the entire product
    development cycle
  • Used to ensure a usable product
  • Iterative

5
Introduction to user-centered design
6
Introduction How does it work?
  • Learn who the user is.
  • Design for that user
  • Create a rough prototype to test with the people
    who will use it.
  • Revise based on what you learned.
  • Build a prototype that is close to the finished
    thing.
  • Test again.
  • Make fixes based on what you learned.
  • Ship the product. Include a feedback device so
    you can make the next version even better.

7
Introduction Who does it?
  • Internal User Research Specialist

8
Introduction Who does it?
  • Internal User Research Specialist
  • Outside Consultant

9
Introduction Who does it?
  • Internal User Research Specialist
  • Outside Consultant
  • You

10
Introduction Why do it?
  • Know if the product meets user needs before you
    build it
  • Cheap to change a sketch
  • Affordable to change a Photoshop comp
  • Expensive to change fully coded product
  • Customer service expensive as well

11
Introduction Why do it?
  • Enable you to develop easy-to-use products
  • Satisfy customers
  • Decrease expenditures on technical support and
    training
  • Advertise ease-of-use successes
  • Improve brand perception
  • Ultimately increase market share
  • Next who are the users?

12
Who are the users of the system?
  • Start by collecting pre-existing information
  • Hunt down previous data (marketing demographics,
    surveys, past usability tests)
  • Hold stakeholder interviews
  • Conduct customer service interviews
  • Next Talk to the user recruiting

13
Finding the end user
  • Recruiting
  • Develop a portrait of the user (a la the persona)
  • Develop a screener based on this
  • Recruit typical end users
  • Professional recruiter
  • Do it yourself
  • Offer a consideration cash or a gift
  • Watch for ringers
  • Professional testers
  • Inarticulate users

14
Not the end user
  • Employees
  • Designers
  • Programmers
  • Market researchers
  • You
  • Next Contextual Inquiry

15
Talk to the end user Questionnaires
  • What is it?
  • Series of questions to be answered by users
  • Mail,or on website
  • Quantitative, rather than qualitative
  • Good for gathering large amounts of facts
  • Less reliable when dealing with opinions
  • People lie, and with very little reason

16
Talk to the end user Questionnaires
  • Two types
  • Factual
  • Gender male or female
  • Do you drink coffee daily?
  • Opinion
  • From a scale from 1 to 5 where 1 is easy and 5 is
    difficult, how hard was it to use this system?
  • Would you buy this product?

17
Talk to the end user Questionnaires
  • Tips
  • Keep it short
  • Do multiple surveys, rather than one long
  • Phrase questions cautiously
  • Use Likert scales
  • Keep it anonymous, and state that in the
    beginning
  • Allow single vote per IP
  • Next Contextual Inquiry

18
Talk to the end user Contextual Inquiry
  • Onsite observation.

19
Talk to the end user Contextual Inquiry
  • What is it?
  • Observe users in the environment they use your
    product
  • Watch them use the product
  • Understand their behavior by encouraging them to
    think out loud
  • Remember to compare what they say and what they
    do.

20
Talk to the end user Contextual Inquiry
  • Technique Thinking-out-loud
  • Also used in usability testing, participatory
    design
  • Users encouraged to voice their thoughts as they
    use the product
  • Try an exercise to illustrate

21
Talk to the end user Contextual Inquiry
  • Running a contextual inquiry
  • Recruit a number of typical end-users
  • Visit the location where they would use your
    product
  • Ask them to show you how currently do their tasks
  • Ask them to accomplish those tasks with your
    product
  • Analyze your results
  • Next personas

22
Personas
23
Persona development
  • Personas are
  • A key to user-centered design
  • Not The User but one particular user
  • Inform the entire design process
  • Who are we designing for?
  • What are we designing?
  • How will we design it?
  • Does this design work?

24
Persona development/user profiling
  • Personas are
  • Archetypal users
  • Conglomerates based on user data
  • Built collaboratively by team
  • Useful for keeping users front-of-mind

25
Grace
  • (62/ female/ widowed/ Little Rock, AR.)
  • I like playing my favorite games online, but if
    I can play with friends, well thats even
    better!
  •   
  • Personal Background Her husband has passed on.
    She has two grown kids, both of whom live far
    away. She misses the kids, but has a fairly large
    circle of friends that she spends time with.
  •  
  • Technical Proficiency Profile Limited. Can use
    her browser and her email. MS Word confuses her,
    and she doesnt like using it. Doesnt know what
    an OS is. Tends to click yes if the browser
    prompts her to do anything, and will click wildly
    until things work.
  • History with Shockwave and/or AtomFilms Plays
    crossword puzzles daily and saves them. Plays
    card games, PhotoJam, but is offended by South
    Park cartoons
  • Shockwaves opportunity If Grace can be
    convinced to participate in community activities,
    she will become a loyal user of the site. She
    needs to be sheltered from the sick and twisted
    content, however.
  •  
  •  

26
Sarah
  • (22/ female/ single/ Washington, DC.)
  • I like AtomFilms because its just about the
    films
  •  
  • Personal Background Liberal arts education at
    college in the Midwest Just graduated and moved
    to DC. Has a dog Likes music and art. Went to
    Lilith Fair. Sends out mass emails about causes
    she cares about, or jokes.
  •  Profession Editor for non-profit organization
    (35K/yr)
  • History with Shockwave and/or AtomFilms First
    came to AtomFilms because she did a search on
    Sundance content. Shes heard about the merger
    with AtomFilms, and is very worried about
    AtomFilms losing its edge, or begin buried in the
    Shockwave.com site. She thinks some controversial
    material might be hidden if AtomFilm gets merged
    with Shockwave.
  • Shockwaves opportunity If Shockwave can prove
    they are trustworthy enough to coax her into
    signing up, she will become a loyal visitor and
    shortlist subscriber. If she feels clicking
    through ads will help Shockwave support
    independent film, she will.

27
Scott
  • (17/ male/ single/ Shaumburg, IL.)
  • I want something cool and really on the edge.
    Something you cant get on TV
  • 2 most common user
  •  
  • Profession Full time student (studies exercise
    and sport science)
  • Personal Background Youngest kid in family of
    five. Likes to be seen as a little rebellious.
    Excited to be in college, but not really brave
    enough yet to actually do anything rebellious, so
    uses Internet to express his self-image.
  • History with Shockwave and/or AtomFilms hes
    been to Shockwave a few times, and usually clicks
    games as soon as the navigation bar loads. He
    likes playing arcade games, and shoot em ups.
    Spend two hours playing King of the Hill
    paintball recently.
  • Shockwaves opportunity he is already hanging
    out in the games section regularly. If shockwave
    can introduce him to its sick and twisted
    material, it can keep him on the website longer,
    and use his tendency to send out links to spread
    the word.
  •  

28
Persona development/user profiling
  • How to create
  • Summarize findings, distribute to stakeholders.
  • Hold a work session with stakeholders
    development team to brainstorm personas.
  • Prioritize and cull lesser personas to develop
    primary and supporting personas.

29
Prioritize personas
30
Prioritize personas
31
Prioritize personas
secondary
primary
special
32
Use personas
  • Keep them near
  • Hang them on your wall
  • Make poster, placemats, puppets
  • Role-play personas
  • Evaluate with them
  • Next mental models

33
Analyzing what youve learned.
  • Mental Models - diagram of the end users
    perception of product
  • Study the user
  • Map the mental model
  • Design from the mental model

34
Designing with what youve learned.
35
A simple mental model
36
A simple mental model
37
A complex model
38
Map the mental model
  • Pencil and paper
  • Write down how the user thinks
  • Sketch it dont worry about being pretty
  • Adjust by addingbusiness restraints
  • Design from this model
  • Share with developmentteam

39
Designing with what youve learned
  • Persona Scenarios the power of story telling
  • Get your personas out
  • Tell ideal user experience for one persona
  • Adjust for business constraints
  • Build for this scenario

40
Example Persona Scenario
41
Designing what youve learned.
  • Task analysis
  • Step by step breakdown of scenarios
  • Helps define interface/interaction needs
  • Flushes out potential opportunities for errors

42
Designing what youve learned
  • Task analysis
  • Start with scenario
  • Break it up into discreet tasks
  • Subdivide into smaller steps

43
Task analysis
  • Purchasing a purse at nordstroms.com might
    include the tasks
  • 1. locate purse
  • 2. add purse to shopping cart
  • 3. check out

44
Task analysis
And so on
45
Example Task analysis
46
Designing for the end user - and with them!
  • Prototyping
  • Simple low-fi mockup
  • Often paper or simple html
  • Early or not designed
  • Quick, easy to revise

47
Designing with the user
  • How to Designing and Preparing a paper prototype
    test
  • Required paper, pens, tape, scissors and 3
    people
  • Use paper and hand draw prototype
  • One person acts as the computer, one as
    moderator, one takes notes
  • Ask users to accomplish tasks
  • Make small changes as needed
  • Paper prototyping kit available at
    http//www.infodesign.com.au/usability

48
Rapid prototyping
  • Paper or html
  • Very early stage design, or half complete design
  • Allow time between tests to make changes
  • Note where design gets better or worse
  • You should be making fewer changes as the test
    continues
  • The report is partly the final prototype
  • Next card sorting

49
Participatory Card Sort
  • Way to understand users mental models and
    language
  • Useful on sites with large amount of content

50
How to Running a successful card sort
  • 50-75 pieces of content (not categories!)
  • Provide as much information as possible while not
    overwhelming
  • Lay all content out on a large table, shuffled
    thoroughly
  • Provide blanks for category labels
  • Encourage thinking-out-loud
  • Be helpful, but do not suggest or advise. Play
    psychiatrist.
  • Collate results and look for patterns.

51
Usability testingat last or at first?
  • Do testing while you still have time to fix
    problems
  • Do testing before a redesign

52
Fighting for it.

You will have to fight. Prepare your arguments in
advance.
53
More reading
  • Contextual Design
  • Dont Make Me Think
  • Designing Web Usability
  • Inmates are Running the Asylum
  • Software For Use
  • All can be found at
  • http//www.eleganthack.com/reading/
  • (and more!)

54
More reading
  • Usable Web http//www.usableweb.com
  • Usability Toolbox http//www.best.com/jthom/usab
    ility/
  • Ask Toghttp//www.asktog.com/
  • Useit.com Jakob! http//www.useit.com
  • UIE.com Jared
  • http//www.uie.com

55
Conclusion
  • User-centered design works
  • It makes good business sense
  • Its affordable
  • Its satisfying

56
Questions?- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-Christina Wodtke christina_at_carboniq.com Ca
rbon IQ User Experience Group http//www.carboniq
.comtel 415 824 7090
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